


Three Ways the Winchesters Were Never Werewolves

by Hope



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 5 Things, Alternate Universe, Animal Transformation, Crack Fic, Gen, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-22
Updated: 2006-05-22
Packaged: 2017-10-02 00:08:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hope/pseuds/Hope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>http://hopeful-fiction.livejournal.com/42076.html</p></blockquote>





	Three Ways the Winchesters Were Never Werewolves

*

**1.**

"This," Sam says for at least the fortieth time in a twenty-four hour period, "is _seriously_ fucked up."

"I know," Dean sounds as mournful as Sam feels, if a little more… distracted. "Country, Bluegrass, _Easy Listening…_"

He hisses a breath in as if in deep regret, and the truck wavers a little onto the shoulder as Sam slaps Dean's hand away from where it’s alternately digging out and tossing aside a variety of cheap roadstop cassette tapes. "Dean--Would you--Jesus Christ, pay _attention!_"

"Alright, alright," Dean says somewhat placatingly, both hands settled firmly back at 10 and 2. "Don't get your panties in a twist."

"Dean," Sam says again, voice low and as much as a final warning as Dean's going to get, he knows. "What the _hell_ are we going to do." Less of a question now, more just a verbal reiteration of the knots they're both tying themselves up in.

"We'll take him to Jim's," Dean says, trying and only part-way failing at sounding like it's a firm decision.

Sam's laugh holds little, if any, humour. "For what? So Jim can _bless_ it out of him? We already tried an exorcism, remember?"

Dean remembers. He almost feels a little sick just doing that much, the helpless laughter skittering up through his solar plexus again without so much as a by-your-leave. The look on Sam's _face…_

"Maybe…" he says, swallowing down what are most definitely _not_ giggles. "Maybe… we do nothing? He's not actually _harming_ anyone, is he? I mean…" He glances into the truck's side mirror; it's taken up completely by a _closer than it appears_ wolf-head, huge tongue lolling out over gleaming teeth and pulled to the side and half-way across the side of its face by the wind, eyes half-closed and blissful. The ears prick up and head disappears abruptly from view; the truck rocks a little and Dean watches in the rear view as the huge grey shape ambles from one side of the tray to the other.

The pick-up pulled into the shoulder they've been gaining on for the past ten minutes zips past the instant John hangs his head out alongside the passenger window and gives a short bark. Sam swears loudly, flails, sending map and journal flying and fuck, Dean can't help it, can't help himself, struggles to keep his eyes open to see the road even as his face feels like it's going to fall off. The laughter, of course, only brings the recent memories of other such moments back, and before he can stop himself Dean's pounding the steering wheel, gasping out between bellows, "The holy water! Licking it off your… And _begging_, oh _man…_"

Sam gives him five minutes to get under control again, and it's almost not enough, because when Dean looks over the sight of Sam brooding and tense-jawed in profile next to the wind-blow wolf's head eagerly straining immediately outside the window almost sends him over the edge again.

"Okay," Dean says at length, taking deep breaths. "Okay. Seriously, though, dude, I think we have some time to figure out to do with this one -- he seems perfectly happy with Kibbles in the meantime."

Sam's still frowning, but the set of his shoulders is at least a little more relaxed, now. "Yeah," he sighs finally. "You're right. Though… it's weird. Why _isn't_ he all aggressive and trying to rip our throats out?" A pause. "Or anyone else's throat out?"

Dean shrugs, one-shouldered as he frees a hand from the steering wheel to fiddle with the radio dial. "Enough aggression in his human form, maybe?" He twists past local radio, national news, moving fast enough through stutters in the static that they become random blips and crackles. "Werewolves are all about setting free the repressed hunter, aren't they? Maybe that," he tips his head back a little, gesturing behind them. "Is the return of Dad's repressed."

"Maybe." Despite the lack of throat-tearing, Sam sounds not entirely happy with that answer. "It just freaks me out, dude," he says. "It's just not _right_."

Dean bites back another grin. "I know, buddy," he says. "I know."

**2.**

He knows something's not right the moment he steps in the door. For one, the TV's on but there's no one watching it. Not _entirely_ a sign of something amiss, only there're no sounds of screaming or furniture being knocked over coming from the boys' bedroom, only soft lilting sounds of happy. Happy _Sammy_, John realises, as he takes a few more stealthy steps towards it.

"You can sleep on my bed," Sam's saying, and John freezes, poised with his head cocked by the barely-open crack of the bedroom door. "Not on the pillow, because that's gross. You can sleep at the foot, like all good puppies. You're a good puppy, aren't you? You're _my_ puppy."

John frowns and pushes the door open, _enough is enough_, and stops. Sammy's sitting cross-legged in the centre of his brother's bed, _not_ in his pajamas, arms and lap full of what appears to be -- oh god -- a shaggy grey puppy (if the propeller of a tail is anything to go by), almost as big as Sam himself.

"_Sam_," the tone gets his attention, at least, something not completely out of control in John's life; but the dog doesn't stop its frantic licking of Sammy's face. Not _dog_, John realises, and he's moving even as he thinks it, gripping the back of the wolf-pup's neck and hauling it off Sammy before the thought can even follow-through; and there's the outraged wail he's come to know so well in the past several months:

"Dad, _don't_! You're _hurting_ him!"

and the puppy writhes a little in John's grip, yelping before slipping free and dropping back to the bed where Sammy pins it in something that resembles a football tackle.

"_Samuel Winchester,_" John tries again, but Sam's wise to him now and all that gets is a look of deep, deep resentment. John tries a different tack. "Where's Dean?" he says. Sammy buries his face in the ruff of the puppy's neck. "_Sammy,_" something that resembles more infuriation than panic rises in John's chest. "_Where. Is. Your. Brother?_"

"I don't _know!_" Sam says, face completely hidden, now, and the puppy looks at John balefully. He swears under his breath, rubbing a hand over his face as he turns away. Sam. Sam has a puppy. A _wolf_ pup. John is going to have words with Dean, serious _words_.

And then he double-takes a glance at the far side of Sammy's own bed, the gap between wall and bed that'd started off a favourite hide-and-seek place before Sammy'd got cranky and tired of the game. John holds his breath as he leans down, very, _very_ carefully picking up the small golden lamp from where it gleams dully in the low light.

_Stay calm,_ he thinks, _Boy's not going to tell you anything if you're screaming at him. Surefire way to have him screaming back, and nothing else._

"Sammy," he says, not entirely failing at keeping his voice calm and level. "Where did you get this?"

Sam looks shifty and the puppy's eyes bulge a little as Sam's arms tighten. "Nowhere," he says.

And then John remembers the antique store, grilling the owner about provenances, keeping half an eye on the boys running up and down the aisles of old, dark-stained furniture. Remembered Dean's way with words over their diner lunch, able to explain to a suddenly morally outraged and demanding Sammy what John couldn't, _"Sometimes you just need it more than they do. Sometimes they won't even notice it, don't know they'll be better off without it. Sometimes you just gotta take it."_

And if he'd known appalled silence was what it took to get Sammy to cooperate, maybe a whole lotta tantrums in the recent past could have been avoided.

"I didn't know!" Sammy’s saying, eyes huge and damp, tiny fists clenched fierce in fur, the pup starting to whine as well as Sammy starts the tremulous gulping of air that John knows from long experience leads to the kinds of sobs that Dean had always been better at handling than him. "I just wanted a puppy! You… you never let me have anything!"

"I know," John says, setting the lamp down carefully before crouching by the bed. And hell, did he know -- John's withholding of the simple boyhood joy of a dog had been Sam's resentment-of-choice for long months, now.

Sam's head seems so tiny under his hand, the fine bones at the back of Sammy's skull so delicate against his fingers, hair so soft. He swallows. "I know, son, I'm sorry." He shifts the caress to the pup's head, too, mouth twisting apologetically as it lifts his head and licks his fingers. _Sorry, Dean,_ he thinks.

"Sammy," he says again - _careful, now_. "Is there anything else you wished for?" And remembering what Sam's been screaming at him of late, _I wish I'd never been born!_, sends such a spike of unexpected agony and _what if_ through John that he can't breathe for a second.

Sam doesn't look him in the eye. "More Lucky Charms," he mumbles into grey fur. "But all I got is some gross rabbit's foot."

John almost laughs. Almost. "So you only made two wishes?"

Sammy nods wordlessly.

John swallows again. _Careful. Careful._ "Don't you wish you had your brother back?"

Sammy gulps, sniffing fiercely and clenching his fists into the pup's fur before releasing them, little white fingers splayed tensely, then relaxed into a looser grip. "Yes."

**3.**

He freezes like a metaphorical deer in metaphorical headlights; only in this case a different quadruped is somewhat more applicable, and Jess is the headlights, arms crossed below her breasts, expression not impressed. _So_ not impressed.

"So, did you have a good weekend?" she asks, her tone cold enough that Sam swears he sees icicles form on the ends of her hair. He un-freezes somewhat cautiously, drops his bag and begins to shrug out of his coat, slowly, as if he's trying not to spook her.

"Yes?" And wincing a bit at the wary, hopeful edge to his own voice.

"How's your brother? Was it good to catch up with him?"

His gaze shifts from side to side involuntarily, scoping exits before he even knows why.

"He's good. It was good. Great."

And he didn't know seething had had a _sound_, before. Jess holds something up in her hand. "You left your cell phone here."

"Oh, damn, I wondered what--"

"Your brother called."

His jaw works noiselessly for a moment or two before he snaps it closed. Apparently that's all the response Jess needs.

"It was funny, because you know what he said to me? He said, _Wow, Sammy, it might have been two years since we spoke but dude, didn't your voice used to be deeper?_"

Sam winces again, this time at the painfully accurate reenactment of Dean's sleazy-voice, and sure he's tired but surely his reflexes ought to be better than that; he only catches the cell after it's ricocheted off his eyebrow.

"Ow," he says, and Jess says,

"Who _is_ she?" -- or more shrieks it, really, "and _camping_? That's _real fucking smooth_, Sam, a couple days _camping_ every month, while I wait at home and bake _cookies_ for when you get back!"

Sam's stomach gives a really, _really_ inopportune rumble, and then he's dodging more flying missiles; a boot, magazine, umbrella thrown spear-like.

"Jess, it's not what you--" he starts when then barrage stops, but it's too late; she's shoving a coat on over her pajamas, jamming her feet into a pair of pink, daisy-patterned flip-flops. Sam's stomach does a flip-flop. "Jess, no, _wait--_"

She spins as he grabs her arm, only making it half-way out the door. "_What_, Sam? What can you _possibly say_ right now to make this all better?"

Um. "Marry me?"

Apparently Jess has a right hook to rival Dean's, and Sam's unhelpful brain automatically stores that - _hah hah, you punch like a **girl!**_ \- information even as he's clutching his face and watching her blonde hair bounce down the stairwell, the only thing picking up much light in the dark space.

He tastes blood on his lips, trickling from his nose, and it makes his gorge rise.

**Author's Note:**

> http://hopeful-fiction.livejournal.com/42076.html


End file.
